Fresh Ideas, Real Stories, and a Lot of Laughs

Cracking Myself Up – Almost!

“At Laughter On Call, we’re so committed to making you laugh, we’ll crack a rib if we have to!” this was the ad copy running through my mind lying on the cold metal table in a paper dress slit down the back waiting for my torso to be x-rayed.

Land Of The Free, Home Of The Brave

Funny how lyrics can resonate differently depending on where you are in your life.

Laughter In The Time Of Corona

Hello to all our isolated friends. We have arrived at week three of staying safe, social distancing and creating laughter from where ever we are. There is no original way to write this, these are crazy times.

Loc Founder Dani Modisett Talks Laughter and Hope

When I first brought my mother to Los Angeles from New York City where she had lived for most of her life -minus a long decade she spent in suburban Connecticut – she was doing okay. Given how enamored she had always been about Manhattan, in that singular way that native New Yorker’s can be, we anticipated a lot worse, tantrums, sleepless nights and seething looks of contempt.

Loc goes Israel

Loc’s Beginnings

The great aspect of living in a city where everyone comes to realize their dreams, is that it’s full of creative people oozing ideas, good and bad. In no other city in the country are the coffee shops standing room only all day long.

“LUNCHTIME LAUGHTER”? WHAT? AND…WHY?

Some might argue we’re a motley crew. Ranging in age from 30 to 93, in t-shirts, unshaven with unkempt hair, we meet Monday through Friday at noon, following the lead of our in house “comedy care” expert instructing us to breathe deeply, make funny faces and, depending on whatever comedy principal we are taking on that day, tell silly stories.

My Mother, Her Hands

I feel like I’ve always been aware of my mother’s long tapered fingers. Most of the time they were covered in gold rings, catching light as she lit a cigarette or held a glass of wine, always with her pinky extended.

Our Top 3 Laughter on Call Jokes

I was late to altar, so to speak, meaning it took me a long time to settle down and get married. Apparently, my mother no longer remembers that I did.

Q&A With a Loc Comedian

Jackie Monahan is a comedian and writer. She has been working for Laughter On Call a little less than a year. I was lucky enough to catch up with her between her time with Carmen, who she makes laugh between 10-12 hours a week, and the rest of her jam-packed writer/performer schedule.

Send in the Comedians

Not what you’d expect to hear from someone who created a company that hires comedians to use their talent to make people with Alzheimer’s, their caregivers, and their families laugh. And yet, every time I visit my mother, now in the late stage of the disease, I am reminded of just how relentlessly sad it is.

Sundays with Muriel

If you’re old enough to have a parent who is a senior, you may remember the seminal book Tuesdays with Morrie. This memoir, recounting the wise and intimate conversations that the author Mitch Albom had with his former college professor Morrie Schwartz in the last months of his life tugged at the heartstrings of popular culture with surprising vigor.